How to Find Placeholder and Coming-Soon Websites in a List

To find placeholder websites in a list, read each home page's title and text for default-server, coming-soon and under-construction wording. The bulk website placeholder detector does that for up to 100 sites (500 after a free Google sign-in) and labels each row Looks like a placeholder, with the signal and the wording it matched, or No placeholder signal.

A company on a placeholder page has often not launched, or has stopped looking after its site, and may not run mail. It is a weak lead until you confirm it.

The by-hand way

Open the home page and read the title and the first lines. "Welcome to nginx!", "It works!" and "Coming soon" are the obvious cases. View the page source if the page looks blank.

For a few sites that is quick. Across a list it is a lot of tabs, and nobody remembers which default pages say what.

Step 1: paste the websites

Paste one site or a list, one per line. Emails and URLs work too. You can also upload a CSV. No account is needed for up to 100 a run; sign in with Google for up to 500.

Step 2: run the check

Each home page is requested once, over HTTPS and then HTTP, five sites at a time. The tool reads up to 128 KB of it and runs no JavaScript.

Step 3: read the signals

The tool names which of these matched, with the wording:

• Default server pages for nginx, Apache and IIS, and generic hosting default pages.
• Hosting welcome pages, such as "your website is ready".
• Coming soon and under construction notices.
• Future home of or "this website is for sale" wording.
• The sample WordPress page, "Hello world!".
• An almost empty page: under 120 characters of visible text and at most one link.

A row with no signal is not proof the site is real; it only means none of these matched. If the page answers with an error or is not HTML, the row says so instead of guessing. The CSV carries the signal, the evidence and the HTTP status.

What to do with flagged rows

Open the site, search the company by name and decide whether to keep the contact. A site that says it is coming soon is not necessarily dead. For parking and for-sale pages, use the bulk parked domain detector. For a combined verdict, see removing dead companies from a lead list. To see what CMS a site runs on, try the bulk website CMS detector.

For why a site may have moved rather than stopped, read checking a website has moved to its new host.

What this check cannot do

• Signals come from the page title and text, not certainties.
• A site built by JavaScript can look empty.
• Only the home page is read.
• The limit is 100 sites a run without an account and 500 signed in.

If the company is still alive, check the contact emails

A site that answers does not mean a given mailbox exists. Once you know which companies are still around, check the addresses on your list on the verify page: the first 100 email checks are free with a Google sign-in, no card. Each comes back valid, risky or invalid with a reason, and nothing is sent to anyone on the list. To confirm every site still answers first, run the list through the bulk website status checker. For larger or recurring lists, see bulk email verification, list cleaning and pricing.

Check your list now

Paste your sites into the bulk website placeholder detector.